DXD SI : Chapter 80 : Welcome to the Plant Life, Padawan (Patreon)

Disclaimer - I don't own any of the characters appearing in High School DXD or the Anime or the manga whatsoever.

Inner Sanctum, the Garden

–Magdaran Bael–

He sat down in front of Aldric Zagan, who had finally calmed down after realising that he was not about to be disintegrated. The calming effect coincided with the moment they reached his Inner Sanctum, and he decided to deliberately take the longer route to the meeting room, which was made to create a calming aura for everyone involved.

He had some of his incense sticks planted around the room. To make sure that the Zagan was not too afraid of him, he decided to act as a model host, offering tea made from the highest tier cow milk he had in stock. This particular one, he was going to use in the next month’s competition with Odin, because he’d heard from the grapevine that Odin had something truly spectacular to show for the next month’s food competition, likely regarding his fruits or veggies, a category he lagged in compared to the Norse God.

He led by a healthy margin when it came to milk, milk products, meat and meat dishes, but Odin led the game when it acme to fruits & veggies, something he wanted to change, and he had a hunch that the key to winning that competition, once and for all, was sitting in front of him, clearly enjoying the tea, but his eyes were still on a swivel, trying to take in everything in front of him.

Likely to scope out escape routes, even if escape was virtually impossible. Most probably, a habit from before he was put under and was left forgotten, just like a certain other Half Devil Leviathan Descendant. 

“So,” he began, seeing that the Zagan was too much in his head to talk at all. He looked at the jumpy Zagan before continuing, “I’ve read that you refused to create war machines, as most of your House did during the war?”

“Yes! Ahem. Yes, I much rather preferred to look after the gardens. They had more potential for Devilkind as a whole anyway.” The man picked up steam but soon lost it as he realised where he was.

He leaned back in his chair, eating some ice cream as he encouraged the man to continue, to see where his thought process was going. “No, go on. You were talking about plants being the key to Devil kind’s progress?”

The man gave him a dubious look at that, as if it was unbelievable to him, but when it was clear that he was being serious, Aldric Zagan continued talking, “So, most of my family used our powers horribly irresponsibly and inefficiently. Animating one of our enemies with a mobile command matrix required the same amount of effort and magic as creating a dozen plants that could be used for dozens of different purposes. Of course, making a single purpose tree was always easier and more efficient, but my point still stood!

You could actually make trees that could take in Demonic Energy or any other energy, except Holy Energy, and then force the tree to concentrate it all in a single fruit. Sure, it would likely kill the tree and leave behind only a single fruit, but that fruit would be very helpful to certain Devils. This way, we could have had a whole army of devils who would only grow stronger, and even at a much higher pace than usual. You only need to grow a few thousand fruits, train a small army for a few years, and that’s it. You would have a much better unit of actual Devils than just raising zombies that died instantly and only served to increase enemy hate.”

The man took a breath after that, his body stiffening as he realised that he had just gone into a whole tirade about the way his entire House was going about wrong their entire lives, eventually leading to their deaths at the hand of the Angels.

He gave the man a small smile. “I take it you don’t really like using your powers for violence, then?”

The man tried to look blank for a moment before letting out a rueful chuckle. “Whatever gave it away? Anyway, I will tell you the same thing I told the Rebels as well as the Satans back then. I would rather die than use my powers in the same braindead way my ancestors and family did.”

The man looked completely drained after saying that, as if admitting that had taken everything he had in him, which was impressive considering the amount of energy he had just pumped into the formerly emancipated body of the Zagan. Still, the allure of the tea was too much for the man to resist, even at death’s door(in his mind anyway), especially since the cup was auto refilling and made sure that the tea was always pleasantly warm.

Another one of his works, borne from the hobby that Doctor Gablehauser told him to follow. Now he could use his powers to make sure that the enchantments were stuck to the objects almost permanently, eating magic from the ambient air, as long as the objects and the enchantments were both small and relatively simple. Now, he no longer had to go around patching the enchantment work done on small, relatively fragile things, or subscribe to those annual enchantment maintenance packages that Azazel sold to supernatural beings.

He sighed, watching as the man jumped a bit before setting the cup down regretfully on the table and facing him head on, as if he was facing death bravely. He snorted at that before sending the cup back to his hand.

“Relax. I am not going to kill you. I don’t need you to make weapons for me. You are far too weak for that. I need you for something else.

“...And what is that?” Aldric Zagan asked him after taking a moment to quickly slurp on the tree greedily, something that only made him smile, as the milk would only serve as yet another perk for the Zagan to stay in the Garden long term. Not forever, but it was likely that Aldric Zagan would not be able to see the outside sun for a long time, not with the still legendary fear of the name involved in both the Fallen Angels as well as the Angels.

Azazel should be fine; he could use this to troll the Governor General of the Grigori, but the rest of the Angels, Fallen or otherwise, would likely raise an unnecessary ruckus.

He waved his hand around them, as the walls of the room sank into the ground, revealing the lush greenery all around them. Trees, plants of all sizes, shapes, and colors, co-existing peacefully with each other, with birds and insects roaming about as well. There was the regular wave of purple light, sometimes mixed in with yellow, as the Mother Tree did its job of whacking away the weeds, purging away the extra growth and then encouraging growth wherever needed. It was a task the Mother Tree had grown especially good at after he had spent only a couple of months training it.

Honestly, that alone had freed up so much of his time that he could focus on some of his other projects, like the long term Pocket Dimension project capable of running on any type of energy.

“I assume you noticed the garden? And its speciality?"

The man had shrunk on himself when the Garden was revealed, holding onto that cup of tea for dear life, his knuckles having gone white. After hearing the question, he replied, “... Yeah, I noticed it. You have some kind of massive creature in the Garden. It is everywhere. Beneath me. Above me. Around me. Its scale is…. I can’t sense the end of it. It is…overwhelming.”

He chuckled at that, “That would be the Mother Tree. It is the main entity of the Garden, responsible for all the other life in here. It is the overarching structure that keeps the Garden stable. I assume you are sensing its roots as well as its overshoots everywhere around us.”

The man’s posture, which had been afraid and defensive, disappeared and turned into one of excited wonder. Leaning forward, Aldric Zagan asked him, “So, it is a Genius loci. How did you come by it? It must be thousands of years old to have such a presence to it. It is definitely borne from a tree, I can sense it, and yet…”

“Yet what?” he prompted the man, who just closed his eyes, and he felt the man’s bloodline trait activate, an aura of green appearing around the man. He raised his hands to stop the roots that were about to strike at the source of unknown interference inside the Garden, curious to see the Zagan trait in action.

The green aura latched onto the roots around him, travelling through the roots, spreading as soon as it reached another root, the process continuing until he could tell that at least for the area around them, the Zagan had all the roots in his hold. When he’d realised what the Zagan was trying to do, he had to directly connect with the Mother Tree as well, pumping his power through the garden, then through the roots that stabbed into his back, just to control the reaction from the vast network of roots that made up the Mother Tree, because of the sheer amount of defense protocols he had installed into the Tree, all to prepare for the possibility of someone like Zagan to take control of his most prised possession.

Now, though, he was more curious about what Zagan could do with his limited power. He was no threat to either him or the Tree, as his power could barely cover this small area, and even if he was foolish enough to try and create some zombie esque spores that could self multiply and spread faster than he could blink, he had the entire area in lockdown, with instructions to nuke the whole place with his power at a moment’s notice.

He had a hunch that Aldric Zagan was not one to do so, though, not with the genuine excitement he saw on the man’s face when he told him about the Mother Tree. He wondered how the Zagan would feel when he realised that the Mother Tree was barely two decades old, having been grown from a small sapling into what it is today, all by himself.

The glow reached a crescendo before it all abruptly disappeared, Aldric reaching forward weakly to take gulp after gulp of the tea, the color returning to his face as he finished multiple cups of the tea. Yeah, he’d forgotten about the regenerative effects of all the good products he made on lower power beings at least.

“Huff. Huff. What…was that? I could barely make out a fraction, and it almost overwhelmed me.”

Overwhelmed? When he was actively holding back the Mother Tree from retaliating? The man hadn’t even felt a single surge of power that would have likely torn his soul apart, and he was still overwhelmed, just by the sheer scale of the Mother Tree. 

He sighed. It would seem that there was still time before the Zagan in front of him could use his powers to an acceptable level. Sometimes, he really forgot that he was in the upper echelons of power in the universe, with barely a few dozen people above him, most of whom the world had not seen in centuries.

His hand shot out, sending a ball of Demonic Energy, ignoring the squeak from the Zagan as his power did its job, healing and rejuvenating the man. Man, he could do this hundreds of times without even noticing the drain. The gap between them was really large then.

As for his question from earlier, “That…is the Mother Tree. It is the sovereign entity ruling over the Garden. You will get used to it soon enough. Now, long story short, I read about your story, and while my power has historically been used for Destruction, it can also be used for something else.”

Saying so, a sapling shot up from the ground as he placed his glowing finger on its leaf, and then watched as the sapling greedily absorbed nutrients from the nutrient line provided to it, and used his power to erase any issues that might have formed from growing so fast, and within seconds, a medium sized tree now stood in between them.

“A Bael? The Power of Destruction used to grow trees? H-How?” The man whispered to himself, clearly shell shocked.

He grinned at the man. “I thought you’d never ask.”

It was time to take an apprentice of his own.

So, what if it was a 500+ year old Devil? He had the seniority in terms of power.

He could already imagine the mini heart attack he’d give Azazel when he’d show off the Zagan to the Fallen Angel. Not now, though. After he had grown a bit.

Thankfully, he knew exactly how to stimulate rapid growth in a Devil aligned with plants without creating any issues in the boy’s body.